Awesome evening of Meeraj-e-Ghazal. Some unforgettable words from the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. One of the most renowned Urdu poets, he was considered four times for the Nobel Prize. Perfect rendition by Asha Bhonsle (and Ghulam Ali)

Again, this has mix of words from Hindi and Urdu – none of which is my mother tongue. But here is a shot at a translation…

I have stayed off my drinks this evening. But if it pleases you, at the end of this night
The lovely colors of the early dawn will pour into this goblet of wine
The fragrance of the bloom is spreading as if you (my lover) have changed your colors
The moon is shining in its resplendence as if your style sparkled off it

During my 8 mile run yesterday, I came across this store. And my first reaction was – this must have been named by a woman. Only a woman would feel compelled to put in a descriptive adjective like “fine” for lingerie. To a man, of course, there is no other kind 🙂

Here is an interesting piece of news that should make all oenophiles in the world throw up – apparently, good wine tastes like koala bear urine. You can read about it here: http://io9.com/good-wine-tastes-more-like-koala-urine-than-youd-think-1706588545

Who in this world sits in their lab and conjures up these experiments? Did somebody go – “I know. Here is a discovery idea that will revolutionize the world. I am going to taste all animal urine and see which one tastes most like wine!!”

It was last Thursday. My brother and I had already been on the road for about nine hours. We had visited an uncle of mine who has lost his power of speech, a couple of friends and their parents (you have read about them before) and dropped a fountain pen for a teenager son of a classmate of mine (I had promised him this when I had found out that he loves fountain pens just like I do). Amidst all this, we had to deal with my brother’s car misbehaving. But before heading back to dad and mom in Kalyani, we had one last (sixth, if you are counting) intersection point left for the day.

About a couple of years back, I had dug up Debasish Chakraborty from my school days. You might vaguely remember he, my brother and I sitting down by the street side right outside his office in Salt Lake in Kolkata and catching up on each other’s life over a couple of glasses of tea from the stall on the street. Eventually, I became Facebook friends with his wife Baishali and his twin daughters Tupur and Tapur (Debatri and Bijetri – although I am sure I have gotten the sequence wrong 🙂 ).

Other than the Knowers in Atlanta, I think that is the only family where all the family members are my FB friends. Tupur and Tapur are almost always guaranteed to try my puzzles and more often than not crack them. And they would sometimes send me math or physics problems that they or their school teacher might have gotten stuck with. If my memory serves me right, I had solved each one of them for them and their teacher except one. Which, nobody knows the answer of. (I am positive the question was not correctly framed).

In any case, all thru these days, I had never managed to make some time to visit them physically. Not anymore! I did show up – pretty late though – that evening at their house. Spent quite some time with the twins and Baishali and Debasish. The twins are amazing. It is like they think exactly the same way. They were even finishing off each other’s sentences 🙂

There was something very unique about this visit. As far as I can remember – and I am 99% sure of this – this is the first time I had a drink (of the alcohol variety) at any friend’s house in India. Most of the times, I meet my friends outside their home – unless I am visiting their parents too. In which case, not a chance of having alcohol (you might remember how I have wine at my own parents’ home 🙂 ).

This was an exception though. We had to toast to the outstanding (and almost identical) results the twins had achieved in the just announced ICSE exams!!! Cheers to that!!!